Hi friends. So June has been a pretty busy month for me with work and school and softball, and if you've been reading for a while, you know I had definitely struggled to find time for running last semester with school being so brutal.

But now that summer semester has wrapped up and I have a few weeks of blissful freedom before the fall semester starts, I'd like to get back into some sort of a regular running rhythm.



If nothing else, I'd like to be not stupidly out of shape for the five mile race I run in Rehoboth every year on my family vacation.

So, I'm basically starting from scratch with some running baby steps.

The goal is to re-introduce running three days per week over the next couple weeks with a healthy mix of softball and yoga thrown in as well.



I'm planning to keep the runs slow and steady. Garmin isn't coming along on these workouts since I'm not overly concerned about my speed right now. I'd just like to get some of my endurance back.

After an overly aggressive interval workout last week that left me sore for longer than I care to admit, I've also realized I probably need to ease back into intensity and distance. So I'll be keeping the runs fairly short in the beginning -- probably right around 3 miles.



Over the next couple weeks, I'd like to slowly bump the distance up until five miles feels comfortable again. Once I hit that distance, I'll reassess any speed and distance goals.

I've been in a good running groove this week, but let me tell you, trying to re-build running endurance smack in the middle of summer is not the most fun thing ever.

The DC heat and humidity are brutal even when you're in good shape. When you're trying to re-find your groove, it's doubly miserable.

So the runs have been slow, the distances have been short and I'm trying to be OK with that. It's weird to feel like I'm back the very beginning with my running, when I've run marathons and half marathons in the past. But hey, this is where I am right now, and I'm just going to be OK with this and work on getting that endurance back.

Our last day in Ireland was the only day it ever really rained while we were there. We know we got pretty lucky to only have one real day of rain, since it rains a lot in Ireland.

Our last day in Ireland was also one of our longest days. We left our hotel at 7 a.m. to board a bus to take us through County Clare and eventually to the Cliffs of Moher before dropping us in Galway to catch the train back to Dublin.

I was really excited to see parts of County Clare since that is where my mom's family was from. It was actually really cool through out the whole trip to see my mom's family crest on lots of different things.



While I was there I actually learned a good bit about where her family came from. Apparently her ancestors came to Ireland with Strongbow way back in the day and were one of the original 14 tribes of Galway.

I assume at some point that her ancestors spread from Galway to County Clare before they came to America. My uncle knows that family history really well so I have many questions to ask him next time I see him.

Anyway, back to our last day of the trip.

Our first stop of the day was Bunratty Castle, which was actually a castle in the O'Brien family. This made Alex super excited because those are her ancestors. (This trip was clearly all about seeing ancestral stuff!)





Bunratty Castle had fallen into disrepair years ago, but then a new family bought it and restored it. The tour we took was interesting, but much of the furniture there wasn't from Ireland. The group that restored it did their best to find furniture that was authentic to the time period as possible, but lots came from England and France.





Still exploring the castle was interesting.



There were some nice views of the Shannon River from the lookout towers.



And we got to venture down to the dungeon -- which was a really small, tight space and made me feel a bit claustrophobic.

We also got to walk around the castle ground and the village surrounding it.





By this point the rain had picked up a bit and lots of the animals were hiding out from the bad weather. That of course didn't stop us from making friends with them.



This picture of Erin might be one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip.



After the castle, we hopped back on the bus to continue on our way to the Cliffs of Moher. We stopped to grab a quick lunch (seafood chowder for the win!) and explore a tiny and adorable little town minutes from the Cliffs.



Then it was off to main event of the day.

The views of the cliffs were pretty spectacular. We spent a while hiking along the cliffs' edge, which I won't lie at parts scared the crap out of me because the path was pretty narrow and I didn't want to plunge over the edge on the slippery rocks.





But as Emily pointed out, the rain and the fog actually sort of added to the ambience. The cliffs looked big and majestic and a little bit mysterious.



By the time I boarded the bus after the Cliffs of Moher, I basically looked like a drowned rat.



We also stopped to see the Burren -- these old limestone slabs right along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It was cold and windy out on the Burren and I was glad we didn't spend too much time there.


The wind, my hair. Great look.




Random snail on the Burren.



As we made our way to Galway, we passed lots of old castle ruins right along the coast. It was so crazy to me that there were so many old castles still partly standing. We also passed several small famine cemeteries, where people were buried when the potato famine hit.



As we approached the city of Galway, we make a quick stop to stretch our legs and grab some pictures near Galway Bay.



We didn't get to spend much time in Galway itself before our train left for Dublin, which was actually kind of a bummer. Galway seemed like a really cute city, and I wish we would have had some more time there. But we did spend a little bit of time wandering around and catching some music in one of the pubs.

When we arrived back in Dublin we basically all passed out in our hotel rooms to wake up a few hours later for our flights back to the U.S.

And just like that our trip came to an end. It was a great week with good friends. I honestly wasn't sure how a trip with seven girls would go, I mean that's a lot of people to spend a lot of time with, but we all survived without murdering each other, and I feel like we came home with lots of good memories and stories.

And now, I'm so ready to start planning my next trip.

Here's the Snapstory from my last day in Ireland:

Friday was one of the only days of the trip where we didn't have a super early wake-up call for planned activities. So instead of sleeping in, I decided to explore Killarney National Park on a run.

The entrance to the park was a short ways from the hotel, and one of the hotel employees gave me directions on how to get there and told me I'd be very safe, and I'd only have to worry about seeing very large deer.

So around 6:30 a.m., I set off to explore.

I ran up past St. Mary's Cathedral, which was gorgeous, but wasn't open yet to the public. I made a note to put it on my list to check out the inside later that day.



A block or so later, I turned into the entrance of the park and got lost (not literally) in nature.



The park was stunning and my four or five mile run through it was actually one of the best parts of the trip because it was one of the few times I had alone time to just admire the scenery around me.

Maybe about a half mile into the park, I definitely encountered those deer I had been warned about, and oh my goodness, they were massive. I grew up in PA, so I've seen deer in my life, but nothing like these suckers.



I was a little worried they'd be scared of me and as a result run at me, so I started making a lot of noise and basically talking to them as I ran by. I figured loud noises would keep them away.

I continued to explore the park on foot, crossing over rivers, with my ultimate destination being Ross' Castle at the bottom of the park,

I wasn't sure how far away I was from the castle, but then I suddenly crested a hill and the trees parted and there was the castle in the distance. I mean seriously, where else in the world can you be running through a national park and then see a castle in the distance?! Definitely only in Ireland.



I ran out to the castle, passed a park ranger who said "Top o' the morning to ya" and then cut out of the park to the main road back to my hotel.





View from the castle grounds

After a shower and a full Irish breakfast (so.much.food), we boarded the bus that would be taking us on our tour of the Ring of Kerry. The Kerry Peninsula is one of the pretty well-known attractions in Ireland because of it's gorgeous views of the ocean and surrounding tiny towns.





Our first stop was to see some Kerry Bog ponies. These little miniature horses were super friendly, and Emily and I obviously made immediate friends.





We stopped at several other places along the ring to take in the views.



This gorgeous river cutting through the hills pretty much perfectly captures Ireland.



We also stopped further along the ring to get views of the Atlantic Ocean and in the distance the Dingle Peninsula.





Dingle Peninsula from the Ring of Kerry

Every time we stopped and got off the bus, we couldn't get over how green the grass was and how blue the water was. Truly, it was like something you'd only see in the movies (which is perhaps why the last scene in the most recent Star Wars movie was filmed on an island right off the coast of the Ring of Kerry!)



One of the more fun things we did on the tour was getting a demonstration of sheep herding from a shepherd and his dogs.



The shepherd demonstrated how the dogs responded to both voice and whistle commands and could round up a whole herd of sheep that were grazing on the side of a big hill.

We spent the rest of the afternoon stopping in various little towns along the Ring of Kerry. I explored a church, saw a very random statue of Mary on the side of the road, put my feet in the sand on some Irish beaches and marveled how just how pretty everything was.


Toms in the sand





We got back to Killarney pretty early in the evening, which left us plenty of time to explore the little town. We all sort of broke into groups to explore on our own.



I wandered back to St. Mary's since I was curious to see what the inside of the church looked like. I guess my timing was pretty perfect because daily Mass had just started with the bishop of Killarney. Before this trip, I had never been to Mass outside the U.S., so it was a really neat experience for me.



After Mass ended, I spent some time wandering around admiring the gorgeous stained glass and all the little shrines inside the cathedral. As Erin said at one point, I had major church-dar on this trip. Any time we'd see a church, I'd spend some time checking it out.



After geeking out over the pretty church, I met up with Emily and Hadass for dinner at a different pub and on a recommendation from a friend, ended up stopping for ice cream at Murphy's.



All of the food in Ireland, including the ice cream, was super locally sourced. And while by the end of the trip I was definitely craving something other than bland meat and potatoes, I can't deny that the food we ate was super fresh.

After another long day of exploring, I passed out on top of my Kindle yet again when we got back to the hotel.

Friday Snapstory: